There's more or less exactly the same topic over at csipgs now. Although that one actually started with someone asking for ST the game.
Sorry haven't read the book, the only Heinlein I've read is the black cat one (a murder story on some space station). My fave Sci Fi authors are Asmiov, Clarke and Hamilton.
I'll stick to the same argument I had on csipg-s though. Books are books and movies are movies, it's like comparing apples and oranges imho. Verhoeven took the parts he considered would make a cool movie and left out the other parts. Maybe he didn't think a "deep" movie would make very well at the box office? I'm a Kieslowski fan myself but I don't think he ever intended his movies to make the top 10 in the sales charts. Verhoeven is less concerned with the cineastics and more with making cash.
Marcus